I Didn't Text Him...Vodka Did Ch. 2

I'd expected, foolishly, that my choosing of Lucas over Julie and the girls would have been enough to mend the bridge between us. It took me a while to see just how much I'd hurt him, and what I'd need to do to win back his trust.

At first I was lost in kissing him, it was the answer to every wishful dream and unanswered prayer that I'd had since walking away from him. How many times had I looked for him out in the world? How many times had I insisted on going to his favourite places in the hopes that I could catch a glimpse of him? How many times had I dreamt of stumbling across him and once more losing myself in him? Just. Like. This.

Then he pulled back, and I felt my heart break at the look of anger and accusation simmering behind his eyes. His breath rose and fell in harsh huffs, half breaths, half growls. The truth was written all over his face, and the sight of it almost broke me. "You aren't going to take me home," my whisper was barely out when his hands roughly yanked me to my feet.

"Bathroom, now." With his fingers biting viciously into my arm Lucas directed me through the crowd, down the back hall and into one of the single stall rooms. The lock clicked shut and I found myself backed against the wall with Lucas' hand around my throat. My heart sang at his use of my favourite power play and I smiled, just a little.

Pushing against his hand I begged for more, when his fingers flexed and tightened my eyes fluttered shut. They flew open a second later when his grip bit harshly into my skin for a second and he gave me a shake.

"No, look at me," he growled. "You're here to answer my questions not to play." Obediently I opened my eyes, only to have them fill with tears when he asked his first question. "How many times have you let that bitch dress you up like a common whore?"

"Don't do this Lucas," I whispered. I tried to look away, to turn my head, but on either side was a mirror showing me everything I didn't want to see.

He was right, I looked like a whore. The skin tight Lycra dress was too small and hugged every part of me I hated. I wouldn't have chosen it, I'd only worn it because Julie had insisted. I was wearing five times more makeup up than I'd ever wear if left to my own devices, and my once bright red lips were a shade too dark for my pale skin. After my kiss with Lucas I looked ridiculous and knew it.

"Don't what?" He seethed, leaning over to catch my eyes again. "Don't ask how many nights you've gone to whored yourself out for her? Don't ask how many guys have fucked what should be mine?"

Angry didn't begin to describe the energy rolling off him in this moment. Livid probably wouldn't do it justice either, and while his hand was around my throat, Lucas maintained that perfect control that ensured he wasn't hurting me.

I wanted him too though, that's always been a part of my fucked-up-ness. The need to be punished for the thoughtless, terrible things that I do to him, to us. It drove me to ask for, to say things I shouldn't and tonight that was no different.

"I shouldn't have called you," I whispered in a voice broken with a short gasping sob. "I should go." When I moved to pull away his hand tightened to an unforgivable force that pushed me back against the wall and held me there. My body fought back a riot of arousal and regret.

"You didn't call me," he reminded harshly. "I called you after you texted me for the first time since walking out on me two years ago. So no, you don't get to go. You're going to tell me just how many times you've gone out to 'hook up'."

I fought it for as long as I could. Not because my answer was all that terrible to normal people. 'Normal' people wouldn't care that I'd gone out at least 30 times with my friends in the last two years. 'Normal' people wouldn't think twice about...

"How fucking many?" He hissed in my ear. In the end he leaned forward and maybe it was the fact that those furious grey eyes weren't burning through mine, but whatever it was it helped my confession.

"I've gone out 30 times, maybe forty." He held me there like that, his mouth pressed against my ear, our breath quietly syncing into the same frantic pace. He didn't speak, I could tell he was waiting for the rest. "I kissed a handful, I left with three."

I thought his grip would tighten with each sentence but it actually let up a little with each word. His maddening lips moved against my neck and I shivered involuntarily.

"So you slept with three then?" Was it just my imagination or had some of the anger in his voice ebbed a bit? His nose moved and traced the line of my ear, again I shivered. I took a chance and reached for him, sliding my hands up his chest to cling at his lapels.

"I tried," I confessed with a sob. For a second that hand holding me pinned against the wall tried to pull away but I pushed against it, silently begging him not to.

"Explain," he murmured against my cheek, licking away a tear that fell. When I still struggled to find the words his voice softened even more. "Talk to me kitten, I need to know."

He did need to know, I knew it the second I'd picked up the phone and heard his voice. My hands clenched around the fabric they clung to.

"I tried to go home with two of them but couldn't. One I convinced to take me to a different bar instead, and I ditched him there." My voice shook and the chest of the man pinning me against the wall did too but for an entirely different reason.

"Poor blue-balled bastard," he whispered with a chuckle into my ear as he placed a kiss just below it.

"I told another that I got a text message saying my mother was sick," I confessed.

"I should be so fucking lucky," the man of my dreams growled in reply.

"I went home with the other," this I barely whispered, but it was enough to have him still in my arms. "We went to bed together but I couldn't go through with it. I made him stop."

Lucas' breathing changed, it was now coming in long, deep, measured breaths, the kind that told me this was anything but ok. "You let him inside you?" He asked in a deceptively calm voice.

My heart ached the way it did that night I laid beneath a stranger and tried to forget my feelings. I couldn't answer with more than a nod, he didn't reply with anything more than a sharply indrawn breath.

Time stretched out between us as I tried find the words to make this right again, but I feared it never would've. Lucas' hand slid up my neck to cup my chin in an unforgiving grip.

"So you just told him to stop?" He growled at me, "and just like that he stopped? You're a heartless cocktease if you made him leave like that. That doesn't seem like the little slut I know so well."

His words cut through my misery like a knife and shame instantly replaced every emotion coursing through me. My blush must have said it all.

"You let him cum in your mouth didn't you?" The fingers on my chin released their hold just enough for me to nod. Then they clamped back and viciously whipped my face away from his. "And you let me kiss that fucking mouth?"

I could only imagine what he was feeling right now, my germaphobe Dom barely took his hands out of his pockets when we went out. After years together he refused to share straws or toothbrushes. It wouldn't matter this was six months ago, it wouldn't matter that I'd been to the dentist for a cleaning in between then and now.

My heart sank, why had I bothered? I wondered, when Lucas stepped back to the sink and pulled out the emergency antiseptic mouthwash from his inside pocket. I knew him well enough to know that after he washed his mouth out the hand sanitizer would follow.

I couldn't meet the angry eyes staring at me through the mirror so I closed my eyes and fought back my tears. From its place inside my bra, my phone began to vibrate, I made the mistake of glancing at his face as I reached for it. My shudder seemed only fair in the face of his rage.

It was Julie, of course, I'm sure we were both surprised it took this long for her to call. Lucas gurgled with the mouthwash twice and spat it out with a force so great the liquid splashed back up towards us.

"Go ahead and take it," Lucas said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "We're done here." I swore I heard what was left of my heart break in two. Defeat had never hit me quite that hard.

I expected him to leave me. I expected him to hurl a few more insults my way and then slam the door in my face. He'd never touch me again, that had been his promise to me every time I went out with the girls. If I broke his trust, if I so much as kissed another guy, let alone sleep with someone, he would wash his hands of me.

There was nothing to do but prepare myself, but fuck it if I was going back to my life. I wasn't going back to a mother I could never please and a best friend who made it her mission to make me like her.

They say in every life there is a defining moment and I decided this was mine. Without the gut wrenching sobs that I swore were seconds away, I met his eyes and reached out dropping the ringing phone on the toilet.

Lucas turned to face me, a surprised sneer on his face. "You're going to regret that in the morning."

"Only because it will cost me a few hundred dollars to replace," I snapped back. My defence mechanisms had kicked in and I welcomed my anger. "Best get back to your party Lucas, sounds like your career is all you have left."

I was holding onto to that anger like the life vest it was. With all my false bravado I tried to open the door and push past him. The desperate need to escape this room before what was left of my control snapped was the only thing keeping me standing.

I left my place against the wall only to be pushed back against it, only this time it was the force of his body holding me there. One hand frantically pulled at my dress, the other held my face to the side, far away from him as his mouth ravaged my neck.

He covered every square inch of skin with his hot lips and scraped it all with his teeth but didn't give me the bites I so desperately wanted. Before I could process what was happening he'd pulled my leg up over his hip, pulled my underwear to the side and thrust inside of me...bare.

Never in all our years together had we had sex without protection. Sex was messy and dirty, I'd come to expect our shower foreplay and the moments he took to sheath himself. My eyes rolled back into my head as he took me to that place only he seemed to be able to find.

It was savage, there were no gentle caresses, no whispered words, none of the love making that used to seep into our rough play. He took his pleasure from me with no care for if I got anything out of it.

I held my breath when he came, his open mouth pressing down on my neck as he held himself back from biting me. It was bitter sweet being with him again, feeling the pleasure of him but unable to do more than simply give him whatever he wanted in the hopes this wasn't the last time.

He pulled back slowly to lean against the other wall, running a shaking hand through his hair and then over his face. "Fuck," I heard him whisper.

We both jumped when someone pounded on the door. "If you're done, the rest of us could use the fucking bathroom," someone bellowed from the hall.

That was enough to break me out of my shock, pushing off the wall I called out brightly, "two minutes!" For some miraculous reason I managed to keep my tone free of the turmoil raging in me.

Moving to the sink I ran the hot water and stepped back to motion Lucas over, "Wash up," I said quietly. He didn't speak, he didn't even look up at me, just pumped a ton of soap into his hands and washed them as a doctor would before surgery. I reached down and fished out the phone dropping it in the garbage.

He recoiled as soon as I moved to wash my hands and fixed his clothing. Three minutes later with red faces we exited and pushed through the crowd to the front door. He didn't speak, didn't touch me, he walked with his head down and his hands shoved deep in his pockets.

Outside I relished the crisp October air and tried to ignore the wetness now running down my thighs. I hailed a cab, pulled open the door and turned back to the man standing behind me.

This was the side I rarely saw, that quiet, withdrawn, broken man who was fighting an internal battle over his obsessions and compulsions. He didn't look up until I spoke, and when he did I felt like the worst kind of woman.

"Get in the cab Lucas," I swallowed the urge to cry and met his gaze with compassion and genuine concern. "Go home and shower, you'll feel better."

"No I won't," he replied so quietly I had to lean forward to hear him. Clearing his throat, Lucas stepped forward, "Get in the cab Addie."

I shook my head and resisted the urge to step back when he surged forward three steps, stopping just short of touching me. "You said we were done," I reminded gently.

"Get in the cab," he said again. There was no anger, none of the resentment he'd had earlier just intensity. "Don't argue with me, not now." We stared at each other in silence for long enough for my resolve to weaken. So much so that when he gave a small, weak smile and said, "You wanted to come home with me a few minutes ago," I felt my lip quiver and let out a long, shaking breath.

In the end I slid into the cab, and all the way over to the other door. Lucas got in behind me and rattled off his address before shutting the door and pulling out the hand sanitizer.

I felt dirty and broken, wrapping my shaking arms around myself I pressed my forehead against the cool glass. As the club faded away behind us, I felt a hand reach out and brush gently against my leg. He used only the back of his hand to caress my knee for the briefest of moments.

"I've missed you," he said not looking away from the window he was staring out of. "More than I'd care to admit."